Simple is good. I think most possible solutions will end up being simple on the player side. It's whats under the hood that might get crazy.

It would be a difficult assumption to make, considering there is a sea between us and so giving me roads won't be that helpful. Not to mention that he doesn't have a port city either.

I mean, if we assume the AI is being slightly smart, then the Roving Plans wants to see your cities and give you Highways for their trade routes. 61 Dust, 8 Titanium, and 5 Wine is nothing to "pay" for that. And giving you Diplomat's Manse...doesn't exactly help you gain an advantage unless you're being peaceful which Roving Clans wants.



Of course, that doesn't explain the "extra 4 tech on top of that" but...

There didn't used to be such a stark difference between Serious, Impossible, and Endless, even after the patch. I am not sure what is causing this.



Yes I did have lot of the map uncovered, but it still doesn't justify such an exchange.

I take it you have a lot more of the map uncovered?



On Endless, I have the AI come up to me with a similar offer...except they want 10k dust from me (or an Era IV/V tech) and nothing from them for map exchange. So maybe there's a difficulty modifier or something?

Stoopid AI! You are so stoopid! ;P

This is definitely not normal and not what I used to experience in the past, with Serious AI.



(I can't upload the save file, as it is in the VIP build)



EDIT: I was able to get 4 extra tech on top of his quite irresponsible generosity.

wilbefast wrote:
That's a very interesting suggestion. So would it be just for the specific tech-trading partner or all empires that the cost goes up?

I'm not sure I like the idea, though. Because of the principle behind...

wilbefast wrote:
I do very much like the idea of reinforcing a diplomatic tie and making it harder for either player to break

If I have loads of Dust or resources but have less tech, it would seem to make sense to try to establish and reinforce a diplomatic tie with another player/faction who has better tech but less Dust/resources. And consequently, have a long term relationship/peace/alliance/etc where we both profit from trading in a case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_advantage. Of course, you could also have a scenario of Comparative Advantage: if I could produce 2000 Dust a turn or 1000 Science a turn while another faction could produce 1200 Dust a turn or 800 Science per turn (and we valued these equally -- yes, I know that's not the case, I'm simplifying for the sake of an easy example)...then I should be trying to focus on producing Dust and trading it for Science as much as possible (if I "need" 900 Science per turn, then I'll take the 800 from the other faction and sacrifice 200 turn a Dust for the last 100 Science).



But a major issue here is that you can't realistically balance for both. If you assume that players will try to do tech trading with the AI (either with their own techs or other resources) and tune the AI's tech progression with that in mind (either through the AI tech trading among themselves as well or through AI bonuses)...a player who doesn't engage in tech trading will be left far behind. And if you tune it around assuming no tech trading, people using tech trading will find it too easy. To grossly simplify it, pretend each trade with the AI gives a bonus of 10 to the AI's score and the player's score. I mean, so far, they both equally profit and it seems like it SHOULD be fair. But if the player then repeats that with the other four AIs, at the end of the turn he's 50 points up (assuming 6 person game) while the AIs are only up 10 points each. Now they COULD then do trading among themselves and the end result would be everyone up 50 points...but obviously if the AIs are trading among themselves and the player is not engaging in trade...then the player gets left far behind.



Something interesting I've noticed is that the AI tends to value a lot of early game techs while still early in the game as not being worth much Dust (in part because Dust is a lot more precious then). Which means you can pick up Era II techs for not much Dust at all, like less than half of what the Forgotten would have to pay to buy them from the game itself. On the flip side, in later Eras the AI will start charging MORE than what the Forgotten would have to pay -- which means the Forgotten are better off simply paying the game then while earlier they're better off paying the AIs. Obviously the later era stuff is more of a Forgotten specific issue, but early game it seems all factions could get through Era II much faster by paying the AI.



But it still seems weird to have the AI charge you more than the game: "Look, Wild Walkers leader king dude...I can throw 5k Dust into the air and the tech I want will magically appear...and you're trying to charge me 6k for it. Even though if I throw the Dust into the air you won't get a single particle, you're literally just losing Dust here."

wilbefast wrote:


Also a very interesting idea! I do very much like the idea of reinforcing a diplomatic tie and making it harder for either player to break

That's one thing Sins of a Solar Empire did right with its diplomacy (on the whole though, it was nothing special). Diplomatic pacts were created and new, with better ones unlocked as your diplomatic relations improve. They can get quite powerful.



ES too had something a bit similar, namely access to resources. I thought it was clever, though not enough to discourage simply taking those resources.

It was a really great idea, Quinevis. <3

Again IMO, when it gets to trading resources (especially with different resource types), it's really difficult to script a good AI. Moreover, to also include several difficulty levels.

On one end of the scale you expect a lower difficulty AI to accept "bad" deals (let's say that it would overpay you 4:1, relative to a what the base script would calculate as a "fair" price), and on the other end you would expect the AI to make you overpay the things that you would want to buy from them (let's say double the price or even worse).



What I would try to do if I were Amplitude is to implement something like a "global market statistics" system.

Meaning that every time a market trade takes place, the corresponding info would be also be sent to this central place, along with some contextual information (# of regions owned, estimated military strength, how "confident" or "threatened" the AI feels at that point, etc.). By gathering more info, the devs at Amplitude could improve the trading algorithm, no ?

I think simple is really the name of the game.



I think a simple tooltip added to the influence cost of tech trades could say, "Each time you trade for technology, the influence cost will permanently go up," would work.



And then I think the easiest, clearest way to implement this idea it would be to make it a modifier on your empire that applies to trades with all other empires. The first tech (from anywhere) might be 20 influence, then 50, then 100, then 200, then 500, then 1000, etc.

As far as specific trading partner vs empire, I can see either way working mechanically, though in my head I was thinking per specific trading partner. If this route was explored, though, I think it would be important to include a hover tooltip on the diplomacy screen when engaging in tech trade that explains why your influence cost to trade tech is increasing. All this said, I admit that it's possible it could feel very un-fun/arbitrary in actual practice. Hope you guys can come up with something clever.



As a slight alternative to this, as opposed permanently ramping influence cost over time with tech, AI tech trading "weight" could permanently be ramped per tech instead. You could even scale the weight of tech by comparing scientific advancement, instead of number of techs traded (IE, the AI compares its own empire with yours, you are on par scientifically and thus it does not wish to give you tech, or the AI compares its own empire with yours, you have researched 50% of the tech it has, it might be willing to trade tech with you until that number reaches 75%, at which point it would no longer wish to trade tech again).



As for what I said about tying specific tech to diplomatic ties, I can totally imagine what a mess that would be to implement in any game, even if there wasn't already a system in place and it was being worked on from the ground up. It would probably be a mess to manage from a player standpoint as well, haha.



Edit: Apologies for the rambling.

Quinevis wrote:
Possibly the influence cost for trading tech needs to ramp up drastically and permanently based on how many have been traded (lore: they begin to distrust your zeal to learn their scientific secrets)?

That's a very interesting suggestion. So would it be just for the specific tech-trading partner or all empires that the cost goes up? We do have a system a "chaos" modifiers which increase the influence cost of terms (ie. it costs more to declare war when you just signed a peace treaty), but it's not possible to stack the same sort of chaos at the moment. It's also limited to one-on-one relations. Kaboomer and I will discuss this in any case.

Quinevis wrote:
Perhaps trading tech could be like an agreement that can be terminated (lore: they only share the surface level benefits from the tech, not teach understanding).

Also a very interesting idea! I do very much like the idea of reinforcing a diplomatic tie and making it harder for either player to break: it's why we have commercial and research agreement increase in value over a long period instead of being instantly at full power. But if each technology is shared as part of a separate contract then players will need ways to easily control which contracts are predicated on which diplomatic state (ie. you get these technologies as long as we're allied) as it would mean a lot of micro-management otherwise (eg. my diplomacy screen is full of technology embargos). In a way it would make more sense to attach terms (border control, map exchange, etc) to a relation state rather than to sign them independently. At this point it is a bit late to change the diplomacy/technology system to this degree It will be something to consider for a future 4X maybe

Increasing influence costs for trading tech sounds like a really, really nice fix. I think that's pretty brilliant. At some point, the influence cost just isn't worth it and that creates a very simple barrier to excessive trading.



If you can only realistically get 4-5 techs (per game) out of the AI before the influence cost is really high that makes it a fun and compelling decision. What do I really need/want.



I also think it would be fun if tech trading were a bit more limited.

I think the major issues is that the actual weight of an item's worth varies drastically from game to game and faction to faction. I can see why this is a difficult thing to manage. I do appreciate that in EL trading tech costs influence, I think that is brilliant. Thinking back on playing MOO2 with friends, we would all trade tech with each other and crush the AI. Not particularly fun. Possibly the influence cost for trading tech needs to ramp up drastically and permanently based on how many have been traded (lore: they begin to distrust your zeal to learn their scientific secrets)? Perhaps trading tech could be like an agreement that can be terminated (lore: they only share the surface level benefits from the tech, not teach understanding). I definitely agree with willbefast, adding an option to disable tech trading is just circumventing the issue that it should be a balanced and working game system.

icarus86 wrote:
I think trading with all sorts of "items" (resources, tech, diplomacy stances and so on) is really nice for the player, but also crazy difficult for the devs to program efficiently ...

Agreed, I'd also like an option to disable trading with AI. More options for players would be nice. I understand you'd like to fix everything and keep things the way they are but at some point it's just great to have different ways to play the game.

I think trading with all sorts of "items" (resources, tech, diplomacy stances and so on) is really nice for the player, but also crazy difficult for the devs to program efficiently ...

You have to be very careful when it comes to designing resource and tech trading in 4x games. It has been an easy way of taking advantage of the AI in every one I have played. If you leave it as is, the player gets way ahead by throwing his junk at the AI for a tech lead. If you open up the AI to tech trade as much as the player does, you accelerate the game pace too much (and screw new players over who don't tech trade).



Perhaps if you could only trade resource for resource and tech for tech.

Hi there. My first post.



This thread jumped out at me because I'm experiencing a similar issue with the AI undervaluing techs. In my last game (on serious) I achived the legandary deed that gave 150 emeralds. I never use the booster myself so I traded them with the Draken. I was in era II at the time and he was in era III. For 60 emeralds and something like 500 influence I was suddenly in era IV. Skipping an entire tech era becasue I picked up a random deed by chance seems very unbalanced to me. I makes getting those 150 booster goodies the most powerful gain in the game... and it only used half of them! I could have jumped another era if I wasn't now the tech leader and none of the AI had anything interesting to trade.



In that same vein it makes influence more appealing than science for making scientific breakthroughs. Why spend time putting pop on science duty or building science improvements when 75 Influence and a couple of trash boosters can get you almost any tech you like. It barely seems to matter what the booster is either. Spices to broken lords? They'll give you their enitire archives for less than a single boosts worth.



From what I've noticed the AI doesn't mind trading tech (with the exception of their prized latest era tech) with an underdog. Once you take the lead in score it starts to jelously guard its tech. It means that there's a rubberband mechanic going on that makes it so that you can never really fall behind. And because you've been focusing on Industry/Dust, once you make that trade and draw level with the tech leaders you are the 1# world power, or at the very least on track to being.